Intercultural Literature in English Language Education in Arab

Deby Lara Sucia. M

1688203030

English Education Department

Semester VA

2016

Widya Gama Mahakam Samarinda

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 Abstract

In this case, discuss about complex reality of the Arabic language and the related
lingering problems which appear on the Arabic cultural scene which include, the
interaction of the Arabic with foreign language or English language. The aim of the
paper is to know what is English language becoming the mother tongue or foreign
language or not even used in Arab, how teaching method for English language in
Arab, and how literary that their use in Arab.

1.1 Background

During the fifth century, the Qur’an that’s written in Arabic introduced the Arabic
language to be the language of the Muslim domain that spread around the world. Navi
(2003, page 2) said, Arabic became is the official language of the world domain.
Rivers in central Asia to the Atlantic Ocean, and even north to the Iberian peninsula in
Europe. When Islam spread throughout the world continuously, Arabic was inherently
followed.

Various sciences created by Arabs such as Chemistry, Algerbra and Astronomy

make Arabic became prestigious. English also has absorbed Arabic influences not
only through connection with the Moorish of Spain but also through Soldiers
returning home from the Crusades and trading links with the Arab world. However,
things have changed now and the most widely used language throughout the world is
English because of the advanced technology and political power that is USA.

For 1000 years, Arabic was the primary international language of commerce,
politics, and scholarship, much as English is in today’s world. Even during over the
centuries English adopted many words that were either borrowed or directly from
Arabic, or were absorbed indirectly through other languages, especially Spanish.

Mother tongue in Arab use many variations of the Arabic language used in the
UEA. The language used in official documents and government departments is
modern standard Arabic and also used in books, magazine, and newspaper. This
language is based on Classical Arabic, which is more complex. Another version of
Arabic used in the UEA is Gulf Arabic. Adjacent Gulf countries, including Qatar, and
Saudi Arabia, there is less popular to use in the UEA, it’s called Shihhi Arabic.

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 However, in neighbor Oman, this language is widely used Shihhi Arabic. UEA law
requires foreigners to speak Arabic to obtain citizenship in the country.

The land occupied by the UEA was a British Colony until 1971. That’s why
English is a popular language in the region. Especially this language that use in the
Education System, where it is taught as a second language. English is also commonly
used in markets, hotels, and most commercial businesses. As a result of a large
community of western expatriates living in the UEA, English is more commonly used
than Arabic in that country. The UEA has one of the most diverse populations in the
world, because many foreigners are using a lot of language and the language that is
often used by foreigners is English language because that English language is
important.

In another case, Hassan El-Nabih in ELT Journal Advance Access that published
July 25, 2015. According to Hassan El-Nabih, explore the problem of Arabic
speakers’ ‘overpassivization’ in English by L2 learners in the Gaza Strip. He
considers English proficiency levels and relates them to L1 transfer and the influence
resulting from similarities and differences between the target language and any other
language. He notes, however that Arabic involves diglossia, a sociolinguistic situation
in which two different varieties of a language coexist for communication. The results
of his task-based study show that there are two types of overpassivization, like a
ungrammatical and unnatural. The data provided empirical support for the argument
that Arabic native speakers make overpassivization errors in English.

1.2 Teaching Method

Is teaching Arabic to speakers of other languages easier than teaching English as a

second language? Aren’t Arabic letter(s) written as pronounced and the written letters
pronounced as they are written? (Abu Amsha. 1997). Second language learners often
develop an adequate grammatical competence without equal discourse and pragmatic
competences. Writing skills are one of the most complex processes in learning foreign
language because of many factors. Inadequate delivery of the target language is usually
minimized up to several hours a week usually hamper the development of communicative
competencies of students. The difficulty is that EFL teachers do not often give adequate
attention to developing student discourse and pragmatic abilities at writing. Instead, they
focus on the structure of language, spelling, and correct punctuation. This trend is possible

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ascribed to the fact that EFL teachers find it easier to focus on teaching at the micro-linguistic
level, that is mechanics of writing, spelling, punctuation and sentences structure rather than
teaching in discourse and pragmatic level. Furthermore, this practice is often indirectly driven
by testing techniques and policies adopted in public schools, where the focus is usually on
producing grammatically correct sentences that are free starting from spelling errors and
punctuation.

The results of this process are usually of this process are usually undesirable and the
goal beats because this practice does not produce communicative language users who are
competent, especially in written expressions. As a result, curriculum designers and textbook
writers are becoming increasingly aware of the need to develop the discourse and pragmatic
competence of foreign language learners as the main components of the overall
communicative competence.

For example, the Europe General Reference framework for language (2002), states
that the main purpose of foreign language teaching is the development of communicative
competencies of students, which combines three main components: Linguistics,
sociolinguistic, and pragmatics (p. 108). Pragmatic competence is related to the functional
use of linguistic resources. They including proper language production in context, speech
acts, and language functions. Next, pragmatics also related to the characteristics of the and
conversation discourse such as cohesion, reference, coherence, courtesy, collaboration in
conversations and take-turn conventions.

The subjects of the study are university freshmen and sophomores who are enrolled in
different major at the University of Sharjah. Five hundred male and female students’ written
paragraphs and essays were collected from writing classes such as Academic English 1 and
Academic English 2, where there focus of instruction was on developing reading and writing
skills. These students completed 12 years of study in public and private schools. All of them
started learning English in grade 1. They also satisfied the university admission requirement
that is attaining TOEFL score of 500, or an IELTS of 5.5.

1.2 Literature
The performance of EFL learners in writing has been investigated by many researches
in different languages. For example, Hackling (1991 : 13-28) analyzed the error
committed by Japanese students in writing English to determine which errors where the
most frequent and most serious at the sentences level. He found that errors in tense where

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the least serious. Kim and Kim (2005:68-89) identified for major types the problems in
Korean University writing classes: emphasis on grammatical from, overemphasis on final
product, lack of genre-specific across the curriculum and the need for more diverse types
of feedback. These problems usually interfere with the students’ intention to the reach
their full potential.
The performance of Arab learners of English in writing has also been extensively
investigated. However, most of those studies examined the problems at the sentences
level, focusing on grammatical correctness, problems in tenses, prepositions, the
mechanics of writing, and cause of weakness. For example, Abi Samra (2003: 1-4)
conducted a study to identify, describe, categorize, and diagnose Arabic speakers’ errors
in English essays. Her ultimate purpose was to determine the sources of those errors and
purpose remediation techniques. She managed to identify a number of error types:
substance (mechanic and spelling), semantic errors, lexical, errors, syntactic errors. The
problems that Arab EFL learners encounter in writing English and the causes of these
difficulties were investigated by many researchers such as Al-Khuweileh and Al-
Shoumali (2000), Al-Jamhoor, A. (2001), Al-Hazmi, S. (2006) and Umair (2011).
Umair (2011), for example, conducted a study to identify the causes of the problems
that Arab learners of English encounter in multi-ability academic English writing classes.
The author found that the problems that EFL Arab learners encounter in writing
composition can be partly ascribed to the organization of teaching materials and
resources, time allocated to teaching English per week, students’ attitude and differences
in their level of understanding. Furthermore, Ezza (2010) conducted a study in order to
examine the effect of educational policies on the quality of the students’ writing. He
found that the weakness in the writing of Arab learners’ of English is not always due to
an inherent weakness in the students. Educational policies pertaining to the number of
students in each class and the use of outdated teaching methods are factors that lead to
poor writing quality.

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